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After the grief comes the realpolitik

By Ian Sample and Kurt Kleiner

The loss of Columbia threatens far-reaching consequences not just for the US space programme but for the entire future of crewed space exploration. What happens next will profoundly affect the construction of the International Space Station, and could bring about a fundamental shift in the international balance of power.

Original timetable for building the International Space Station

Russia now finds itself in sole control of access to ISS, while the other partners in the project, Europe and Japan, will have a greater say. Even China, boldly striving to put people into space, may be affected.

Space shuttle missions to the ISS have always consumed the lion’s share of the station’s &dollar;60 billion budget. Most of the larger components of the ISS, including the Destiny laboratory module, the Unity node and the station’s main truss structure, were taken up in the shuttle’s payload bay, which can carry 25 tonnes. The Russian Progress rocket can only manage five tonnes.

And 2003 was due to be the most ambitious yet for the ISS, with the completion of most of the work on its core. Five shuttle flights – two each by Endeavour and Atlantis and one by Columbia – were due to deliver heavy components including structural members and 1900 square metres of solar arrays that would have more than doubled the station’s length from 40 to 95 metres. New batteries and rotary joints were to be fitted to allow the arrays to track the Sun.

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On 1 March, the shuttle Atlantis was to have delivered the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, designed for transferring cargo onto and off the station, and the External Stowage Platform, to supply additional storage space. “These elements were made the size of the inside of the shuttle cargo bay. They were designed around the space shuttle,” says Jeffrey Hoffman, a former shuttle astronaut and now a lecturer at MIT. None of the international partners has a launch vehicle that could do the same job.

Falling behind

With the three remaining shuttles grounded, construction of the ISS is bound to fall behind. “The shuttle is the workhorse for building the space station and that’s what will take the greatest hit,” says David Southwood who runs the European Space Agency’s science programme.

Southwood doesn’t believe that space science will be irreparably damaged by grounding the shuttles. A variety of rockets can be used to launch experiments, which wasn’t an option after Challenger. But other scientists are more pessimistic.

Though NASA has been insisting in recent years that science is at the forefront of its space programme, its partners in the project have complained about proposed budget cuts that would have shrunk lab space and cut the station’s permanent crew from seven to three. This would have left only 20 hours a week available for scientific experiments.

Even before the accident, science experiments were being squeezed off shuttle schedules, says Diana E. Jennings, a neuroscientist at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Space Life Sciences at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Russian role

But NASA’s biggest problem is that without the shuttle it no longer dominates crewed space exploration. It is left in the embarrassing position of having to look to Russia to take up the slack.

“I think they’ll now have to bite the bullet and pay the Russians. For a significant period, they will have a bigger role to play,” one European space expert told New Scientist. Russia will also be in a position to drive a hard bargain with the US, and negotiate greater long-term influence over the ISS in return for its immediate help in servicing the station.

The extra money needed to keep the ISS going will have to come not just from the US but Japan and Europe, too. Russian law makes it difficult to sell space hardware – although not services – direct to the US. Unless these restrictions are torn up, ESA may find itself playing a prominent role as an intermediary, buying Russian hardware in return for more research time on the station from the US. China may suddenly find it has more scope than it expected for manned missions.

All this can only add to the pressure on NASA to find out what went wrong with Columbia, sort it out, and get flying again. It is likely the accident will loosen American purse strings. But Congress, or the American public, may decide that the shuttle is not worth the risks – or is just too expensive. It could go either way.